


rust and stardust

by corvidity



Series: Creating Constellations [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mechanic Tony Stark, Nebula POV, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 05:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14687172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidity/pseuds/corvidity
Summary: Before Tony and Nebula can fix the universe, they have to start fixing themselves.





	rust and stardust

In the silence of the after-snap, she expects it to rain. More than that, she wants it to. Anything to wash clean the taste of ash and blood in the air, the rank odour of their failure.  

Orange dust hangs heavy instead, hazy and dry. Titan has been a dead planet for thousands of years. But it held enough breath for those who landed on its dust-damned surface, and it holds them here still, the left behind.

Her and him. The man of iron.

His shoulders sway and heave. He is quiet as he weeps, tears darkening the dirt. She turns away, momentarily confused by the feeling she is intruding on a private moment. The child must have meant as much to him as Gamora to her, and it means too he has reason to live, to carry on until he (they) can avenge their losses.

“Get up,” she says. He doesn’t move, a figure rusted in place.

“Get up,” she repeats, touching his shoulder. His grief feels large and deep, a storm that pours no rain, and the arm she throws around her shoulder weighs an entire world of guilt and regret.

“We cannot die here,” she says through gritted teeth, and a fraction of the weight lifts.   

**

They stumble inside the ship her sister’s band of idiots flew to Titan, now too large and echoing for their two broken bodies. She props the human in one of the pilot chairs and boots up the systems.

A burst of music assaults her ears, one of Quill’s godawful Terran tunes. It’s unbearable in more ways than one, and furious, she marches over to the outdated device and tears out its wires.

Quill would’ve murdered her for that, but, she bitterly reflects, he isn’t here. Stray sparks fall onto the floor, the singer’s voice degenerating into static. In the ensuing silence, Nebula almost regrets it.

“A cassette.”

It is the first thing the human has said since she half-dragged him to the ship. He stares as if enraptured at the now smoking device, hands still cradling his injury. Whatever he used to seal it is temporary, and without proper medical attention he won’t last much longer.  

“Do not move,” she warns, and goes to find the medikit. Nebula patches him up to the best of her knowledge on Terran anatomy, and to his credit, the human sits quietly through her ministrations, only wincing when she applies pressure to the wound.

“Thank you,” he says when she’s finished, and the look in his eyes is so raw, Nebula’s fists clench in memory. “I did not do it for you.”

He struggles to sit up. “We need to return to Earth.”

They have no leads on Thanos, and the Guardians’ ship cannot indefinitely sustain them on a galactic quest to find him. The human needs proper medical care that she cannot provide, but which his allies on Earth can. Heavens know Nebula never made any friends, let alone doctor friends.  

“I’m Tony, by the way. Tony Stark.”

Tony Stark, the man of iron. She casts him a long, searching glance, and seeing no expectation of an answer, she says, “Nebula.” 

**

He gives her the coordinates for Earth, and it’s only after Titan is less than a speck of dust behind them that the niggling pain in her left leg becomes a sharp stabbing sensation. Seems her body is trying to drive home the whole “failure” point too hard.     

“I can fix that.”

Nebula limps past Stark. “You are not stable,” she says, eyeing the not-quite-healed wound in his abdomen. His other less visible wounds are still fresh too. “This isn’t the first time I’ve put myself back together.”

“Alone?”

“I assure you,” she says icily, “I am more than proficient in self-repair.”

He surprises her by sitting back, watching as she snaps gears out, rewires circuits, appropriating whatever she can find around the ship as placeholders for any damaged parts. She feels Stark’s eyes on her hands, keen as a scalpel, but not cutting in the way Thanos had been when he watched her fail during her duels with Gamora.

The weight of Stark’s gaze is not heavy either, and to her surprise, she doesn’t mind it. There’s little judgement in how he simply observes. Around them, the ship hums contentedly.      

She digs her fingers into a mass of circuity, brushing past old and new pieces cobbled together. Many need replacing or updating, but the daily maintenance of her body had never been as important as holding onto her anger, that burning rage. It eclipsed all else.    

Now, every creaking joint and old ache reminds her it was never anger so much as grief that held her together -- mourning her sister’s love, the loss of her birth family and planet, the deep and tender chasm of never having known a home.    

_You should’ve killed me _,__ she yells.Thanos sneers,  _It would’ve been a waste of parts._

Her fingers falter just a second.   

Stark stirs. “You okay?”

_Define okay._ “I’m fine,” she snaps. “Do not take me for an amateur.”  

“I wasn’t trying to insult your pride.” He holds up his hands in the universal gesture for peace. “Just, let me help. Please. I know my way around machines pretty well. Not that you have more than my word for it, but --” he gestures to the blue shape on his chest. “Nanobots.”

Nebula remembers witnessing the power of his armour, its destructive brilliance. Enough to have made her father, a Titan, bleed. “You are not a doctor.”

“No,” he agrees, and looks infinitely sad.     

**

Nebula does not require much sleep -- the imperative to had been gradually programmed out of her with each new mechanical addition. Stark, on the other hand, is still beholden to the biological necessities of his frail and mortal body.

“Stark,” she snaps, eyeing the digital display that tells her it has been the equivalent of twelve Terran hours since they departed Titan, then assessing the dark circles forming under his eyes. “Do all Terrans possess as little sense of self-preservation as you and Quill?”

“I’m a special case,” he quips, to her infuriation.  

“I did not tend to your wounds to have you die from your own recklessness.” And it’s not as if she wants to share a ship with his corpse.

“Sure thing. You’re not the first person to have said that.”

Nebula resists the urge to kill him herself. “There is some time yet before we reach Earth.”

He peers at the controls. “Can’t you program this can to go faster? Give me five minutes and I guarantee I can get us there in half the time.”

“You don’t think I’ve tried? The ship’s engines took some damage on Titan. They’re only operating at 85% capacity, and to push them further would risk complete engine failure.”   

“Nothing I can’t fix,” he insists, approaching the controls. Are all Terrans this stubborn? He doesn’t wait for her permission, fingers skimming across the keyboard.

“Do you want to kill us both?” she snaps. Her leg twinges, a ghostly anxiety she tries and fails to ignore.

“I know what I’m doing,” he mutters, and before she can reproach him, green lights flash across the console. The ship shudders once, a low thrum emanating from somewhere below them. Readouts flash up. Stark reads them over her shoulder, smugness radiating off him despite the weariness under his voice.

“Told you I could do it.”

Up close, his face is frighteningly gaunt, hard grief and determination written in his eyes. It is not the face of a man who believes he __can__ rest, who might even fear it. He must always be doing something, regardless of the risk or chance of success, and if he continues like this, he’ll be dead before they arrive on Earth.

“Stark,” she says pointedly, “I have control of the ship. Your presence is not required. You have done…enough.”

His eyes are dark as they flicker to the stardust drifting across the windshield. “I know.”    

**

Nine jumps later, and the stars wheeling around them look only a little different to the stars from nine jumps ago.

Nebula has not seen hair or hide of Stark since his engine intervention, and as little as she likes him, she doesn't want him dead.    

She finds him sitting on the metal grating, assembling the broken cassette player. Its metal innards and a spool of magnetic tape are scattered around him. His hands never stop moving, picking up pieces and rolling them in his palm, fitting them together under the ship’s bright lights. The nanotech container on his chest pulses a soft, soothing blue as he works.

It slowly dawns on Nebula that this is Stark’s way of planning. It is all he has left -- the pieces of his suit and the knowledge in his head, of how to make and unmake, to repair and fix. It makes no difference whether it’s an engine, the universe, or a cassette player. His tinkering is not without purpose.

“Stark.”

His hands never stop even as he looks up. “Yeah?”

“Your offer. From before.”

The barest hint of a smile crosses his face.

He works in the kind of silence she hasn’t felt in a long time, one of a craftsman who knows his work, whose hands guide him confidently through the tangles of her alien wiring without hesitation. The air around him is electric, his eyes both flint hard and alight, a mechanic’s concentration layered over a scientist’s curiosity.

Stark removes one of her hidden leg blades, raising an eyebrow. “Neat.”

“Practical,” she corrects. “Every time I failed my father, he replaced a part of me with cybernetics. I was not built to be anything but an assassin.”   

He looks pained, and not only because of his wound. His tools clink quietly, the sound magnified in the silence.

“Do you pity me, Stark?”

“No,” he replies, and it rings true. “I’m just thinking, what kind of father does that to their kid? That's beyond fucked up. God, this damn universe and the one next door aren't big enough for him to hide in. He can't run forever. When I find him -- when we find him -- there's going to be hell to pay." 

Even as his anger simmers, his hands are careful as they continue to rework her circuits.

“You know, I could give you some killer upgrades once we’re back on Earth. Your systems are insanely adaptable.”

“To what end?” Nebula retorts. “These parts of myself are merely that -- parts. My body is a collection of spare parts, a reminder of every one of my failures, powered by my desire to kill Thanos. Whatever shiny gadgets you add to me will not change that.”

“I’m not asking to change you,” Stark says. “Only to help you. This armour,” he nods at the nanotech container on his chest. “This is Mark 50. I’ve made fifty versions of this suit, building and rebuilding each one. But I don’t discard my previous designs; I take what was best and I work them into the new one. I’m always looking for ways to improve on what came before.”

He clicks the compartment on her leg shut. “Give it a go.”

Miraculously, there is no pain when she stands. The joints feel smoother somehow, even the minor clicks and aches she’d grown used to now noticeable for their absence.

Nebula looks sideways at Stark, his blue chestpiece glowing, and wonders if it is the first time something of blue metal has ever made her feel more than self-loathing and hatred. The man of iron was right. He is not a doctor. He is a mechanic.   

**

Stark eventually gets the cassette deck working again. Of course he does. She’s learnt in the short time she’s known him that he wouldn’t have expected anything less of himself.

“Turn that down,” she says, and is horrified to realise she doesn’t entirely mean it. The song, obnoxious and loud, is also distressingly upbeat. It is music she could dance to, if she were so inclined, and music that her sister _had_ danced to. Any minute now, Nebula expects to see Gamora emerging from around the corner on this ghost ship, Quill not far behind. Both of them whole and healthy. Alive.

(A lie)    

“I said, turn that down!” She needs no reminders of what could have been, doesn’t want to feel weakness, to entertain even the slightest hint of hopelessness that could drag her back down. And it doesn’t feel right to want to dance or laugh or smile when nothing, save a stupid, nostalgic song, merits it.    

“Alright, alright, keep your wig on,” Stark yells, before silence swallows them whole again.   

** 

Somewhere between their tenth and fourteenth jumps, Stark mentions Gamora. “Who was she?”

Nebula stares out into the dark and then back at her leg. _I take what was best and I work them into the new one._ “My sister,” she says.

The anger and grief pull the words from her as easily as Thanos had pulled her apart on his ship. In some ways, speaking now is more painful, but Stark’s presence holds her steady amidst the turmoil of emotion that accompanies every waking thought of her sister.

She tells him about her training, the duels she was forced to fight with Gamora, how she had found the soul stone and tried to take its secret to her grave, only to fail in the worst way.   

“I’m sorry,” he says.  

He tells her about the child. Peter Parker. Barely 17, a teenager who followed Stark into space when he should have been on a field trip, who died a frightened and lonely child seeking comfort Stark could not provide. A boy who’d had the world before him.  

He tells her about Peter’s family on Earth, an aunt who may or may not be alive, waiting for her nephew to come home.   

“He wasn’t supposed to be there, on Titan.” Stark sinks his head into his hands. “He wasn’t meant to _die._ Kid had a math test next week, you know. Would’ve aced the damn thing, he’s brilliant. Was. They started looking at particle physics in class the other day, and he wouldn’t shut up about it for an entire hour.”   

“That did not irritate you?”

Stark coughs brackishly, half a sob and half a laugh. “God, _particle_ physics.”

Gamora would have liked him, Nebula decides. He is not bad for a human.  “I… I am sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, me too.” Stark’s eyes harden again, and it’s as if Nebula can see the armour slide back over his skin, wounds and all. It takes a machine to know another, and maybe that says more about her than him, to believe she no longer has a beating heart.

“The upgrade,” she says, and watches the armour peel away ever so slightly, “I… I will consider it.”

He smiles a little at that, and some of her anger and grief give way. Within the hollow cavity of her chest, she feels something bloom.


End file.
